Sunday, 26 June 2016

Love in a Fallen City

I read this straight after Occupied City, and to be honest I was
expecting to get a bit more of a compare/contrast thing going. That I’m finding
that harder to do than expected is, I guess, a function of the luxuries
afforded by both time and distance, as well not living under an occupying
military administration.

While Peace is all about the War, for Chang
it’s the elephant in the room: obliquely referenced if at all. Only in the
title story does its violence directly impact upon her characters’ lives.
Otherwise it's generally something in the background, a constraining presence
rather than a compelling force. As in Sealed
Off, which I think is my favourite story in this collection, as a brief
lock down of the city forces a chance encounter on public transport. It's a
beautifully controlled character study and, not coincidentally, the shortest
story here. I think in general I prefer Chang's writing when it operates under
constraints (both literary and figurative), as in the longer pieces there's a
tendency to melodrama, which I'm sure is very well done if you like that sort
of thing, but isn't really to my taste. Chang had a brutally incisive eye for character,
one that I thinks works better in isolation than when it gets lost in plot.